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A “Continuum” Model of Collaboration in ESL
Laura H. Baecher, Hunter College, City University of New York, NY
Angela B. Bell,
University of North Dakota, ND
Baecher, Ed. D. is
Assistant Professor in the MA TESOL Program, and Bell is a Ph.D. candidate in
the Department of Teaching & Learning
Abstract
English as a Second Language
(ESL) teachers tend to be placed in settings that demand collaboration. This article highlights results from two
independent research projects that examined the collaborative practices of ESL
teachers working with content teachers in a wide range of K-12 public school
settings. The authors jointly constructed the Collaboration Continuum Model, which suggests that collaboration
can be viewed in varying degrees, from limited to extensive, and from formal to
informal.
Introduction
Teachers are known to enter the profession
with a desire for autonomy, envisioning the classroom as an arena to exercise
independent decision-making regarding students’ learning goals, activities, and
assessments (Hargreaves & Shirley, 2009; Lortie,
1975). English as a Second Language (ESL)
teachers are no exception, despite their roles, which tend to place them in
settings that demand interdependence. This article highlights results from two
research projects which both examined the collaborative practices of ESL
teachers working with content teachers in a wide range of K-12 public school
settings. Seeing how collaboration in
these settings was both dynamic and fluid, the authors then jointly constructed
a model to represent collaborative teaching practice as a spectrum. The result
is the Collaboration Continuum Model, which
suggests that collaboration can be viewed in varying degrees, from limited to
extensive, and from informal to formal. The purpose of this article is to help
all teachers involved in collaborative planning, as well as those who must
support collaborative instruction, to recognize the wide range of possibilities
that exist, in order to recognize its complexity as well as the validity of its
multiple forms.
Collaborative
Planning and Teaching in the ESL Context
Today’s ESL K-12 teachers work
with English Language Learners (ELLs) in one of several scenarios: as a “push-in”, “pull-out”, “co-teacher” or
“self-contained” teacher (McKeon, 1993). However, since their principal role is
to provide access, through language skills, to content-area subjects, all of
these teaching models require collaboration. At the elementary level, most
language learners are provided specialized English services through a push-in
or a pull-out program. In a pull-out program, these children leave the
mainstream classroom to be taught by an ESL-endorsed teacher for part of the
day. While no empirical evidence indicates which model provides the most
effective instruction for learning English and/or content, against the backdrop
of increased academic expectations for all students, push-in programs have
become increasingly more prevalent (Zehr, 2008). This seems to be based on the belief that in
a push-in model, language learners will not miss what their mainstream peers
are learning. As a result of this recent shift towards push-in programs,
collaboration has become a key topic in teacher education and professional
development.
Need for collaborative teaching for English language learners
The literature generally advocates that
collaboration between content-area and ESL teachers is needed in order to
enhance the academic achievement of diverse learners (Díaz-Rico
& Weed, 2006; Gottlieb, 2006; Holcomb, 2009; Walker, Shafer, Iiams, 2004). Goddard, Goddard, and Tschannen-Moran
(2007) found “when teachers have opportunities to engage in professional
discourse, they can build upon their unique content, pedagogical, and
experiential knowledge to improve instruction” (p. 880). In addition, Theoharis (2007) describes the social justice aspect of
collaboration, calling for an inclusive instructional model rather than pulling
out ELLs, which he believes is a practice that excludes an otherwise
marginalized population. Collaboration between teachers is now regularly
promoted as a way to improve student achievement (Dove & Honigsfeld, 2010).
Barriers
to collaboration
Whenever collaboration is to be
attempted, educators and scholars are cautioned to consider its complexities
(McClure & Cahnmann-Taylor, 2010). Commonly, difficulties
arise where institutional structures are lacking, in the form of time,
resources, and administrator support (Murawski & Dieker, 2004). The
difficulties of moving from independent to interdependent planning and teaching
are also common to all teachers attempting collaboration in their practice
(Friend & Cook, 2003; Wild, Mayeaux &
Edmonds, 2008). Unique challenges are
the differential status of ESL teachers and content teachers, with the latter
seen as having more power, and hence more control in the relationship (Arkoudis, 2006; Creese, 2006;
McClure & Cahnmann-Taylor, 2010); disparaging
attitudes regarding non-English proficient students (Walker, Shafer & Iiams, 2004; Youngs & Youngs, 2001); and disparate approaches to instructional
planning (Reeves, 2006). More models for what effective collaboration looks
like as well as professional development and opportunities for dialogue
regarding effective collaboration between ESL and content-area teachers have
been called for (Davison, 2006; Dove & Honigsfeld,
2010).
Investigations
of Collaboration in the ESL Context
While
the literature is becoming richer regarding the complexities of collaborative
teaching, the theoretical models of collaboration have by and large been
constructed through the lens of the field of special education. The following two research projects (Bell and
Baecher) describe investigations which set out to
document collaboration as it was being practiced in ESL K-12 settings to apply
principles of collaboration developed by Friend and Cook (2010), who defined
collaboration as predicated upon “direct
interaction between at least two co-equal parties voluntarily engaged in shared
decision making as they work toward a common goal” ( p. 7).
Collaborative
Practices at Four Elementary Schools (Bell)
Methodology
Through
qualitative grounded theory, the collaborative practices of content area and
ESL teachers at four urban elementary schools were explored. The first was a
pilot study at a school in the Midwest; three were in the eastern United
States. The goal was to see if and how collaboration was taking place between
mainstream and ESL teachers. For eight months, 12 teachers and two
instructional assistants were shadowed, observed, and interviewed; five
administrators were also interviewed.
Findings
Both
formal and informal structures for collaboration were evident in the schools,
yet in differing degrees, depending on the contextual conditions that existed
at each individual school. Even within a school, an ESL teacher may have
planned and co-taught extensively with one teacher and only consulted
periodically with another, depending on the scheduling, personnel issues, and
logistics of collaboration. Teachers who collaborated formally still relied
upon the informal structures such as “checking in” or “stopping by” to make
sure their immediate needs were met. For example, during one observation, a
mainstream teacher “stopped by” the ESL teacher’s classroom to make sure she
knew of a scheduling change for that day. When describing the collaboration
that was occurring in the schools, it became evident that the collaboration
could be demonstrated as a continuum from “informal” to “formal” (See Figure
1).
At one school,
opportunities for formal collaboration were limited by a lack of time.
Collaboration was described by one participant as “on the fly.” She stated, “We
don’t have a scheduled time, so if I need something I’ll email ‘em or I’ll catch them in the hallway.” The consequence to
this type of informal collaboration was that content-area and ESL teachers did
not know what each others’ goals for their students were. Each assumed the
other was working on certain standards with ELLs.
Teachers in
the other three schools described formal, systematic structures supported by
their administration. They were expected to collaborate during scheduled
co-planning or Professional Learning Community (PLC) times. PLCs are teams
focused on the improvement of student academic achievement by creating and
sharing mutual goals. (Eaker, DuFour,
& DuFour, 2002) Teachers who collaborated
formally knew the goals of the other teachers with whom they worked. One
participant described collaboration as “working closely with other people on a
common goal.” During PLC sessions, there was an established protocol including
an agenda and a facilitator. Teachers at these three schools mentioned their
schools having “a culture of collaboration” in which both formal (established
by administration) and informal (teacher-generated) collaboration were an
integral part of their school day.
Collaborative
Practices of K-12 ESL Teachers (Baecher)
Methodology
In a teacher/university research
project, 8 push-in and pull-out ESL teachers in K-12 settings in New York City
public schools participated in a qualitative and quantitative research initiative
that sought to better understand the way co-planning and co-teaching took
place. These teachers tracked and documented their activities at their schools
over a semester, described their co-teaching and co-planning situations, and
then met to compare observations in a focus group interview.
Findings
Reports from participants
indicated that co-planning was the exception rather than the rule, and that the
degree of co-planning ranged from extensive to limited. There were also many teachers who reported no
co-planning, and in these cases the ESL teacher was left to “guess” what the
content-area teacher’s goals and activities were to be. In these situations, we
know the role of the ESL teacher is diminished, and the result is this teacher
serves more as a classroom aide (Haynes, 2007). What emerged from the data was
total co-planning, in which ESL and classroom/content teachers were equal
partners, with equal responsibility for planning, teaching, and student
learning outcomes, with shared workload in preparing lesson plans, designing
materials, delivering instruction and working with students is quite far from
the realities of schools that were settings for this research.
From the data collected, it began
to appear that co-planning/co-teaching occurred on a continuum across schools
and even within them. Additionally, even
at the individual teacher level, the experience of the ESL teachers was
inconsistent, since the ability to co-plan ultimately rested on the relationship
with the content-area teacher. The
desire to collaborate was a common theme, and participants described the ways
in which they attempted to optimize co-planning opportunities, given the
limitations of their contexts. In the data analysis, the two factors that most
inhibited co-planning were (1) the lack of time for co-planning, and (2) the
degree to which co-planning was highly personnel-dependent.
Scheduling/responsibilities of
ESL teachers preclude collaboration
One of the key findings was that
co-planning was infrequent. In most schools, co-planning did not occur as a
direct result of the school administrators not having created a time for it to
occur. An indirect way that school
administrators inhibited ESL teachers’ co-planning was the workload placed on
them, in terms of compliance, testing, and reporting paperwork, and scheduling
them to work with so many different classroom teachers that it would be
impossible to thoroughly and consistently plan with them all. For content-area teachers, these burdens
prevent co-planning as well. As observed
by study participants:
Most communication that
exists between the ESL teacher and classroom teacher (if communication exists
at all) happens in a 30 second conversation in the hall prior to the start of the school day. When these
conversations occur, the ESL teacher is delighted, as it will prevent him from
feeling TOTALLY like a 'deer in headlights' when he enters that classroom later in the day.
Co-planning also became
unrealistic when the ESL teacher was assigned to a large number of classroom
teachers. For these teachers, basic
communication was a daily challenge:
In the last school I worked at, I was pushing into 9 classrooms/week
in 6 different grade levels, including special education.
Working with so many teachers, it becomes almost impossible to have effective
communication about what is going on in the classroom on a day-to-day basis. ESL teachers are
typically not invited to common planning (where it exists) and/or grade level
meetings and so often have to 'go alone', basing instructional decisions on
state standards, prior assessments, test prep materials that must be utilized,
and individual student needs.
Common planning meetings, or grade-level meetings, are systematic
approaches to curriculum planning found in many schools, yet teachers reported
not being able to attend due to their large caseload of students.
Collaboration is personnel
dependent
ESL teachers reported that they
found opportunities to co-plan and co-teach on an ad hoc basis, based primarily on their relationships with the
content-area teachers. Although schools
overall lacked time and resources designated for co-planning, these teachers
often found ways, great or small, to work with content-area teachers in spite
of this lack of institutional support.
This occurred in proportion to the willingness or interest on the part
of individual educators in the building.
The degree to which this co-planning occurred, then, mostly corresponded
to the extent to which the ESL teacher had the opportunity to work with such
educators. Participants in the study reported widely different opportunities to
collaborate, with some content-area teachers more willing than others:
I have much more contact with my kids'
classroom teachers this year, as I am more comfortable with them personally,
they trust me a bit more, etc. etc. But some are more receptive to
collaboration than others, of course, which is not fair for my kids who have
the teachers who are more resistant.
In
Figure 2, the findings are summarized and presented along a series of degrees,
from extensive collaboration to limited.
These co-occurred within the same school and within a single teacher’s
experience. In other words, collaboration along the continuum
occurred within each co-teaching relationship.
In the spirit of collaboration,
results from these studies were compared and a model developed to reflect two
different aspects of collaboration:
formal to informal, and limited to extensive. These form a continuum of collaborative
practice, as illustrated in Figure 3.
This model problematizes simple linear views
of collaboration. For example, a teacher
might experience formal structures that engender extensive collaboration—yet it
might rarely occur informally. In other
cases, teachers extensively collaborate, but without any formal supports.
Conclusion
Our research sought to situate
emerging understandings about the nature of instructional collaboration, and in
doing so, appears to have revealed even more questions. These questions can be turned into helpful
self-assessments for individual teachers, school administrators, and teacher
educators. As collaboration continues to
be better understood in various contexts, the term will be further refined.
However, if Friend and Cook’s definition is to be successfully manifested, then
certainly the ESL and content-area teacher must be provided the conditions it
entails: equal status, common goals, and
free-will in the process. One of the key outcomes of our studies points to the
need for teacher education to address the complexities of collaboration in
pre-service courses, and to provide continued attention and strategies for
successful collaboration to in-service teachers through sustained professional
development. Attention to formats in
which both ESL and content area teachers may plan, to the contextual conditions
necessary to support collaboration, and communication strategies that will
ensure equal and authentic dialogue (Chamberlin-Quinlisk,
2010; DelliCarpini, 2009), are innovations that may
foster collaboration, to the benefit of students and teachers. What needs to be
further understood is where most ESL and content-area teachers find themselves
on the continuum, and ways to promote effective collaboration practices.
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